Playing Dumb

Did lots of day job today. Got my old SRs squared away, did the major release notes, clicked through a mandatory information security training slide show for more than an hour. Compliance training designed to allow the corporation to pass liability to low-level employees when something inevitably goes wrong (or is discovered, having been wrong since inception). It’s better than the ones about sexual harassment but still laughably useless and sometimes even clearly wrong. It spent a lot of time labeling people who notice wrongdoing as “disgruntled employees” – like Boomer parents who shout “respect your elders” if you ever respond to their ongoing mistreatment and disrespect. But it’s done and I did enough work to probably not do anything but email tomorrow.

Did HA4H this afternoon, while clicking through my training. I wasn’t able to art in real time but I chatted and watched @Vi apply makeup to her fleshy clay friends. @BPS and @Ev did painting together in VR from remote locations, which was kind of cool. And I got to plan for a dragon.

A few hours later I got some dragon, a day earlier than I expected. Which is good because it needs some work. It’s way too big around the neck due to a calculation error. It’s supposed to have stays to let me flap but a design error prevents that from working. It’s pretty though, and with some elastic bands I can make it work for this weekend. Alex feels bad about it but I’m mostly okay with it. I expected to do revisions and present different versions ¹“This is not my final form.” – Every jRPG video game boss. You beat them and pass the stage, but they yell about how they didn’t really lose, then change shape and fly off and wait to fight you again in a few levels. It’s unclear why they do not start with their final form.. And it’s very pretty, even if it is not yet well-shaped. Pics on Saturday, when I figure out what it all becomes.

Didn’t get to see C today; they canceled at the last minute. Turned out fine though because I was busy all night. Mostly with talking a little bit with many different people, doing little chores, and finishing my day job. I also spent more than an hour trying to figure out how to dragon. Didn’t get to supper and a Dog walk until after 9, but did get them done.

Talked with @Yana about disability. Talked with V about companionship. Talked with M about winter. Talked with DerbyK about the ghost of Halloween past. Talked with C about not doing things. Talked with Alex about disappointment. Talked with Dog about supper.

Started doing my nails, after a while away from it. The UV curing setup is nice; this is the first time I’ve used it in earnest. You can do nails at whatever speed you like, one at a time even, get it perfect, and then lock each step into place. Makes it much easier for me to feel safe practicing my brush technique. It’s also great for gluing down stickers or doing stencils or whatnot, because it only has to be good for like 30 seconds and then it’s dry. And you can quickly add layers, which is handy if you’re doing dimensional work.

I learned a new thing today, about time-based triggers.

You told me before that you’ve been anxious in an unfocused way, unable to relax and unsure why, and that it’s bad enough to be impacting your life. Nothing was wrong but you just couldn’t help be anxious when you weren’t distracted. It was different from previous months, but not in any way you could name.

Another you told me that it was natural for you to be depressed at this time of year. Nothing caused it. It’s just how you are. It’s sometimes a lot to handle but it will go away in a few months. In the mean time you’ll just have to deal with it. If you keep busy and distracted and if I don’t bother you about it things will be fine.

But I learned – we learned – that there in fact was a focus for your anxiety. A thing your brain wanted to escape. It made you uneasy. You wanted to flee. Or collapse and hide. To be distracted or energized or distant. If only you could finish this list of chores. If only everyone would stop bothering you. Whatever it takes to keep you from remembering… trauma.

That time your spouse assaulted you with a deadly weapon, just after Halloween. That time you were abandoned by your family, just before 6th grade. And not just the day it happened, but all the stressful days that led up to it. All the lonely days that followed. All the additional stress and responsibilities you had. All the support that you lost. And the next time, it happened. You were “ready” for it next time. You didn’t let it get as bad. But it was still bad. And it just never stopped.

It’s better now. You’re not trapped there. Except when you are. When the calendar, or the temperature, or the smell triggers you back to that place. It’s hard to see from the inside, because you learned to ignore it. You learned real hard to not pay attention to it back when it happened the first 12 times. So now you can’t remember. Can’t remember but still feel. Now it feels like the anxiety of avoidance. Your brain sees thus bad thing coming and tells you to do whatever is necessary to not let that feeling touch you. Your brain thinks you can’t handle it – thinks you’re still trapped – and so it tries real hard to be sure you never smell that feeling again.

But as a human your brain is terrible at this. It keeps you from knowing what’s happening, but it doesn’t protect you from the feeling. You still feel terrible. You always did. It was terrible when it happened and at the time you couldn’t make it better. It’s still terrible now, when you’re triggered back to that big, unprocessed feel. And so you’re anxious. You’re distracted and depressed and unmotivated and unable to relax all at the same time. Your brain is going a million miles a minute trying to find the thing in your present life that’s broken, even if nothing is wrong. Because you feel terrible and something must be wrong.

There is something wrong. A thing you can’t quite remember – that you definitely don’t want to think about – but that is clearly happening. A thing you still feel, even though you can’t see. A thing you’ve been reminded of and triggered into. Your brain tells you it’s “just” this, and you want to believe it. But feels are rarely “just” any single thing, and this is no exception.

I didn’t know this was a thing before. Mostly it doesn’t happen to me, because I’ve arranged for my life to not include recurring events. I’d don’t do holidays or seasons or birthdays or such things. But I bet one of the reasons I gave those up was to avoid these sorts or triggers. I often am triggered when I do holidays and birthdays or whatnot for other people, and I’m sure it would be worse if I did it for myself.

I’m also really excited to learn how broad the trigger can be, and how long it can last. It’s not a countdown to a specific datetime and an explosion like many triggers are – A happens or maybe A and B, and the script just starts running until your brain plays out the triggered feel. But this is an emotional bubble that can last weeks and includes all sorts of smaller triggers. In the past I didn’t know what to make of the idea that you were depressed about “back to school”, given that you weren’t doing anything about school. But now I can help you tell a story about it, to make it eaiser to handle. Now you can tell your own story, and help yourself find the safety you lacked before.

Even if it’s not a trigger – even if the process is entirely extrinsicly motivated and there is no old feeling in the mix – it’s still good to be able to see the pattern. If you know Halloween is going to be hard you can make plans for it to be easier next year. You can have time off. You can have extra support. You can plan new activities that better fit what you need, and what will work for the emotional state you are likely to be in. Taking ownership of the pattern gives you control. Maybe not the sort of control that lets you avoid having hard feels, but certainly the sort of control that ensures you’ll be able to respond to them in a way that you choose, instead of being trapped by them each time they repeat.

Thought more about therapy today. I have a pattern wherein I let therapists think I don’t know what’s happening. I know they misunderstand me but I don’t want to be understood because I didn’t like the reaction I got when I made them understand. I got disgust or fear or some other indication that they could not control, when I asked for help with something important. And so to keep myself safe I decided to play dumb, and let them imagine that they are addressing an issue they are more comfortable with, while I try to translate between my real thinks and feels and some story they are better suited to help with it.

It’s not just therapy where I do this. Almost every person I’ve ever shared with reacts to my experience by being overwhelmed. That’s not an unreasonable reaction. Lots of my life is hard to take. But it’s a barrier to me being safe and connected, because it pulls them away from me at exactly the moments when I most need support. Because it reinforces exactly the sort of reaction I was taught to expect when I was 3.

It’s also a heist skill. I used it all the time to make Mother leave me alone. I used it this week to make an insurance clerk feel like doing the right thing was easier than helping me learn how to do the thing they claimed to want. I used it this week to make a hardware store manager think it was eaiser to tell the truth about their discrimination than to keep up the lie they had been taught. It’s a fine skill to have and use. But I shouldn’t do it in therapy at least not very often.

It’s easy for me to believe my own lie. To imagine that my therapist’s understanding is accurate, and thst the misunderstanding is mine. That’s my default assumption, and one of the reasons it’s hard for me to find therapy that can work. It’s sort of attractive to imagine that they’re prepared to handle me, and that my feelings to the contrary are part of the way I’m crazy, instead of an indication that they’re not helping. It’s not great to imagine that you’re too much even for a professional. And it pushes so hard on my narc fears to entertain the idea that I know better than they do.

In some ways I would love to believe that this is all part of a big heist my therapist is pulling, to provoke me I to a change. But that’s sort of just buying into this fantasy that I can be saved if I merely agree not to care about being saved. It’s sort of true too – if I decide to buy into it it’s plausible to go a long time just scraping off the benefits I can capture – sometimes even getting help – without being understood and believing that acting like a real boy will eventually make me one. I can be cured of the fake mental illness my therapist sees, and I can just figure out how to fake not having the real ones. Finally people will stop thinking I’m too much and will be able to interact with new fake me without being disgusted first.

But it’s more likely, in my estimation, that it’s an emergent behavior rather than a heist. My therapist was overwhelmed and genuinely didn’t understand me and just carried on anyway with a slightly fake situation that feels safe to them. We’ll see how next week goes. I’ll be sure that I do better not allowing myself to accept fake treatment for fake me.

I lost a blue pip on my eyebrow piercing today. It’s not expensive or anything, but it was my current favorite piece for that hole. I’ve got the same thing I slightly different colors, and I’m sure I can get a replacement, but I still miss it. It did give me a chance to try a curly piece though. The color is less good but the shape is fun, and it’s easier to put on. I think it will be less good to sleep in, but I haven’t checked quite yet.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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